Families rattled by calls to close state living facility

Closure proposal would force 274 developmentally disabled to move

Tammie Parker, right, worries about the future for her sister Jackie, who is 61 and has lived at the Austin State Supported Living Center since the age of 6.

Tammie Parker, right, worries about the future for her sister...

AUSTIN - If a state commission staff gets its way, Jackie Parker could be forced to leave the place she has lived for 55 years.

Already, reports of neglect and high employee turnover, as well as a U.S. Justice Department settlement, have led the state to stop new admissions and slowly downsize Parker's home, the Austin State Supported Living Center for Central Texans with developmental disabilities. Now, the state Sunset Advisory Commission staff wants the remaining 274 residents moved out, and officials are taking the suggestion seriously.

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Having to leave the longtime home that has treated her well would be "devastating," her sister, Tammie Parker, said. "It would be so bewildering to her and just very, very difficult."

The Parkers and other residents' families here are caught in a drama that soon could affect thousands more across the state as the Legislature weighs the Sunset staff's call to close the Austin center by 2017, and five more by 2022, in a push to instead serve clients in group homes or other community placements. Texas has 13 residential facilities

The move would save $87 million a year and generate millions more in real-estate sales that advocates say could be used to provide community services to the more than 120,000 disabled Texans who currently get nothing because of funding shortages.

Support from advocates

The waiting lists for admissions now are so long, and community services so much cheaper than institutions, that most advocacy groups are supporting the shift.

It also would follow a trend toward giving vulnerable citizens more independence that has led to the closure of dozens of institutions across the country but only two in Texas over the past half- century.

The proposal must be approved by the Legislature, and similar ideas have failed in the past. However, the response from the Department of Aging and Disability Services, or DADS, indicates this time could be different.

On May 27, five days after the Sunset staff report came out, DADS Assistant Commissioner Scott Schalchlin wrote to Austin families to inform them that, regardless of what lawmakers decide, the center has decided to move out nearly half of its residents by next June. Those residents will have to move to another institution, group home or other community setting.

"We don't make this decision lightly," Schalchlin wrote, noting the high turnover, "but we strongly believe that getting the facility to a more manageable size is in the best interest of our staff and, more importantly, the individuals we serve."

The families reacted angrily, berating Schalchlin at a meeting and planning how to fight the decision.

Local lawmakers used a state House Human Services Committee meeting on a separate topic last week to urge caution in shrinking the facility.

"We just have to be very, very careful because people's lives are at stake," said state Rep. Elliott Naishtat, D-Austin.

This week, the Department of Aging and Disability Services adopted a more cautious tone in its formal response to the Sunset staff.

Responding to the proposal to close the Austin center, the agency said it "supports the goal of serving people with intellectual disabilities in the most integrated setting, consistent with the choices of those individuals and their guardians. Recognizing that permanently closing a center would be a difficult decision, DADS is committed to providing timely, accurate information to the Legislature as it considers this issue."

The agency also said that instead of closing six centers by 2022, the state should appoint a commission to decide how many facilities to close, and when.

Institutional 'turning point'

Still, advocates said the Sunset staff report represents the most serious challenge yet to institutions.

"It's a turning point," said Bob Kafka, organizer of Adapt of Texas, a pro-closure advocacy group. "There has been momentum for this for a while. … Now this comes along, and it's gotten people's attention."

If the back-and-forth has had an impact on the Austin institution itself, however, it did not show on a tour of the old 56-building, 95-acre campus last week.

Residents appeared unconcerned as they moved between day activities and meals in homes that varied from hospital wing-like settings for the most profoundly disabled to buildings that more closely resemble rundown college dormitories for the highest-functioning. One man played "Dune 2000" in a computer lab in front of a workshop where others had spent the morning getting paid to put binders in a box for a local business. A chapel sing-a-long was scheduled for 6:30 p.m.

The institution's 1,268 staff members were asked to let the agency's official response speak for itself, leaving only allusions to the turmoil. While proudly showing the facility's custom wheelchair unit, where staffers tailor chairs to individual residents, therapy director Michael Gayle noted that "you can't do that in the community."

DADS spokeswoman Cecilia Cavuto said more than half of the center's residents have lived there for longer than 20 years, and more than half have a mental illness. Almost none of them understand time, she said. The staff has decided not to inform residents, fearing it would frighten them.

"It is a little weird," said Carol Cook, whose 37-year-old son Jaysen is among those whom officials have decided to move by next June. "We're so scared, and he doesn't know anything is different."

Cook said her son, who has developmental delays, behavior problems and seizures every few days, lived in a group home for six years before spending the last 12 at the Austin institution. His care in the group home was not ideal, and eventually the home simply kicked him out, she said.

Uncertainty and anxiety

Cook, an archive coordinator at a pharmaceutical research company in Austin, said she wants her son to live in another state institution, but at 66 she cannot realistically find a job in a new city.

Although Jackie Parker is not on the list of residents who must leave by next year, her younger sister is also anxious about the future.

Asked about her feelings, she quoted from Schalchlin's recent letter to families about the Sunset staff report: "even though the report is only a recommendation … " he wrote, "keeping the center adequately staffed during this time of uncertainty will be even more difficult."